Religion - should it be allowed to be tax exempt
and get special privileges just because it is a religion?
Taxation of religion - the essentials.
Tax is needed so if a religion is not taxed the money must come from somewhere - it is taken from the people including those who do not want religion to thrive on their money.
The church if it is going to take public money must live by the public rules. As we have seen religion takes even when it doesn't.
Churches are exempted from the financial reporting and
disclosure requirements that apply to non-profit groups. This must stop.
Religions should have to pay their fair share of tax on their income. Unless the
income is raised for real charities, there should be no exceptions.
The parish church is not a charity.
In some nations, the Churches get lots of money through inheritances and is
exempt from even paying inheritance tax.
Tax Relief Schemes in many countries benefit the Church. Catholics who donate to
dioceses and parishes may fill out a gift aid form. This allows the Church to
claim tax on it to raise funds. The Church gets donations. Then Revenue then
will make a payment to the Church out of the taxes it gets in. This rule must be
abolished. It is insane that a Catholic diocese or parish has the same rights as a
charity! This right is abused to get money to build and fix Church buildings and
halls etc. The tax payers may have to pay their teeth to Revenue which then
gives it to the Church to help it build and maintain Cathedrals etc. This is a
disgrace.
Some religions do set up real charities. Christianity is an example of one that
does not. The goal of Christian "charity" is not to help people but to make
their brand of faith attractive so that people will embrace it. It is about
promoting faith therefore Christianity's organisations should not be legally
regarded as charities at all. Christianity in fact teaches that humanitarianism
is a sin for it values people and has no regard for God.
Christians refuse to pay tax on their profits of their enterprises and have
manipulate the law to get exemptions. They don’t care that this puts a burden on
honest taxpayers many of whom struggle to pay their dues to the state. They
expect to get special treatment just because of their beliefs.
Religion must be taxed by the state. Schools of counselling and psychology are
taxed so religion must be taxed as well and especially when it does less good
and most of its followers don't take it that seriously. Religion is only a human
construction and it is not essential to human welfare. Faith is our creation. It
is not faith that helps the person but the person helps themselves by exercising
faith.
Religion is exempt from taxation as if it were a real charity. A charity should
be tax-exempt so that it may help people better, except when the workers take
more than their necessary expenses out of the money raised, but religion is not
by any stretch of the imagination a charity. Religion is not necessary for
giving you a sense of well being and making you good. There are plenty of other
ways to do these. If belief in a higher power does these we are not entitled to
conclude that that religion ought to be awarded a charitable status for you can
enjoy this without being a Catholic or a Protestant or whatever.
It is discrimination not to tax religion. Religion claims to have invisible
merchandise, God, miracles and grace. We tax visible merchandise like washing
powder. We would slap a tax on a man selling invisible or intangible paint so we
should give religion the same treatment. We should be able to see the results.
We should be able to see what we are getting when we associate with it.
The state must not collect taxes for religion.
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Tax Exemption for religion
A religion is usually tax-exempt.
It's charitable and educational acts are what you think
of first when you consider this tax exemption. But often the charity is harmful
and the education is scattered through with lies.
There is more to the favourable tax treatment of religion
than all that.
Religion makes money from producing DVDS and books.
It makes money from property and investments.
It makes money from its "courts". An example is annulment
cases. In Catholicism, you can pay the Church to set you free from your marriage
if you come up with some spiritual impediment to why your first marriage was not
real.
It makes money from selling services such as baptisms and
funerals and other services.
Should a religion be tax exempt?
No.
Religion should be forced to pay just like every other
entity is.
Even if the taxpaying entity or taxpayers paid of their
free will the answer would be no. Religion should want to contribute to the
common coffers for the public good. But needless to say it does not.
Since taxpayers are forced to pay and GIVE AWAY control
of their money to the state the answer is an even more resounding no.
The taxpayer's money should not be used to give special treatment to certain religious views. It in fact gives special rights to those who create and represent the beliefs. An example is faith schools.
Usually it's priests who say, "Catholics pay
taxes so are entitled to state funded schools". But these payers
would reject the lying harmful realities of Catholicism. They need
information. The state treating religious labels as valid is a
problem. Religious labels are just words. I can say that
everyone who touches Lourdes water belong to Lourdist faith whether
they think so or not. Taxes or not church could pay for religion
classes outside of school.
The taxpayer's money should be withheld from any religion
that is not about serving the whole public. The state's job is looking after the
public wellbeing.
It is unfair that Jewish or LGBT taxpayers are made to
contribute towards funding institutions that exclude them. They have to fund
religious entities that urge people to hate them.
Such is the hypocrisy of religion that it does not preach
these values. It takes money unethically and there are no controls over the
collections taken up every Sunday and a lot of stealing is going on. And so much
for listening to a God who says that immoral earnings are not to be donated to
religion (Deuteronomy 23:18).
Aiding
It could be the case that by providing a financial
benefit in exempting churches, the government is aiding religious institutions.
If the state takes money from the taxpayer and gives it
to the Church it is clearly doing that.
The Churches are exempt from property tax which forces
taxpayer to foot the bill for their houses of worship and residences for their
clergy. That is sick in a society that struggles to shoulder up the health
services financially.
The state will maintain many Church buildings while
public schools are starved of funding.
Religions are not true charities
Charities are tax-exempt because they do good for the
public without discrimination. Should religions be classed as charities? A few
might be. But most should not. And of the few that do public good, too many of
them are also hugely profitable.
People who are nearly broke such as college students are
paying taxes. Is it right that these taxes are helping to keep the Church and
major sporting leagues and large charities (which are thinly disguised
businesses for profit) from paying theirs? The question of tax exemptions is a
huge one, an industry in its own right and an industry worth billions. The
taxpayer funds the state and they lose billions every year mainly because the
religions are tax exempt. Meanwhile the hospitals and the standard of medical
care declines ...
There are so many good charities. It is hard to decide
what to donate to especially if you don't have much money. The state needs to
remove religion's tax exemption to encourage people to contribute to true
charities. Religion is not a charity. You should be donating to your local
oncology unit not to the wages of a priest or the upkeep of the church building.
There are churches that are more like businesses than
houses of worship. Those churches blur the moral and ethical boundaries between
'non-profits' and the rest of us.
A true charity will not be happy that its leaders got
away with covering up child sex abuse but the Catholic Church is.
And what about Islam and Judaism that get the right to let animals bleed cruelly to death and lie that it is not cruel even though they won't stun the animals?
They want the blood out of the animal purely on religious
grounds before they will eat the meat. It obviously cannot be a fast death. It
takes time for the blood to all seep out. There is no guarantee that the animal
will be unconscious or stay unconscious.
No religion is worth the cruel death of one person or
animal. It is better for it to disband and for people to keep doing good.
Marriage
Marriage is valid in the eyes of the law. The Church has
the legal authority to perform legal marriage. But it can if it wishes function
not as an employee of the state and do marriage purely in the eyes of its god.
Religious and civil marriage are not the same. You can be married in Church and
the marriage can mean nothing before the law.
The state delegates authority to perform marriage in the
eyes the law to religion. A religion that refuses to perform same-sex marriage
should lose its tax-exempt status. Some say it would be necessary to force it to
respect the civil right of same-sex marriage or to fine it if it refuses to
marry same-sex couples. Perhaps merely taking away its tax-exempt status is
best. It's more agreeable with the separation that needs to exist between Church
and state. Maybe trying to force religion with penalties is less agreeable?
A religion that backs a political cause or political
candidate loses tax exemption
A religion that backs a political cause or political
candidate loses tax exemption. Or it should. What happens in practice is very
different. The Catholic Church in Ireland took on the political cause of
stopping same sex marriage and still enjoyed tax exemption.
Each case should be considered on its own merits
Churches do not deserve their tax-exempt status just
because they are churches. Each case should be examined on its own merits. That
is why each parish Church or Church unit should be made to register as a charity
instead of registering the Church as a whole. Take an example. Most Catholic
parishes do nothing for the community except prayers and magic which no
self-respecting state will see as helping people.
An objection to the need to tax religion
Some object that though the Church is not taxed, members
of the Church are taxed as individuals. This is wholly irrelevant. Organisations
can be taxed even if members are individually taxed.
Another objection
The highest court in America however stupidly thinks that
Churches and tax-exemption should go together. Walz v. Tax Commission of the
City of New York was decided in 1970. The decision was that religion's tax
exemption did not undermine the Constitutional separation of Church and state.
Then Chief Justice Warren E. Burger declared “the exemption creates only a
minimal and remote involvement between church and state, and far less than
taxation of churches…” The argument was that the less fiscal connections between
the Church and the state the more they were separate.
Not all agree.
Associate Justice of the US Supreme court, William O.
Douglas, in his dissenting opinion in Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New
York, decided May 4, 1970, stated, “If believers are entitled to public
financial support, so are nonbelievers. A believer and nonbeliever under the
present law are treated differently because of the articles of their faith … I
conclude that this tax exemption is unconstitutional.”
Conclusion
Religion should be taxed.
http://atheism.about.com/od/churchestaxexemptions/
